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2006 alumni awards go to pioneers in computing, tissue engineering
They were born a decade apart in the same city 6,063 miles away from Berkeley and fled a communist regime to make their careers in the United States. Two of the most influential forces in the computing industry, Andy Grove (Ph.D.’63 ChemE) and Charles Simonyi (B.S.’72 Eng. Math), both natives of Budapest, Hungary, are recipients of the College’s 2006 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (DEAA) for Lifetime Achievement. Also honored as Outstanding Young Leader is Tejal Desai (Ph.D.’98 BioE), a pioneer in the field of tissue engineering.
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Andy Grove (Ph.D.’63 ChemE)
MICHAEL PRINCE PHOTO
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As a young man, Andy Grove dreamed of becoming an opera singer, not the world-renowned engineer, business leader, inventor, philanthropist, author and educator he would become. Best known as cofounder of Intel Corporation (with Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce) in 1968, Grove will receive his award on November 18 at the DEAA celebration on the Berkeley campus.
After arriving in the United States, Grove received his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York before coming to Berkeley. With Intel, he served as CEO and chairman of the board, leading the company to the top of the semiconductor industry to become one of the world’s most successful businesses. Named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1997, Grove has written six books, including Only the Paranoid Survive (1996) and Swimming Across (2001), his autobiography. In 2004 Grove was honored as the “most influential business person in the last 25 years” by
Wharton School of Business and the Nightly Business Report.
He is also actively involved in the Grove Foundation, a private
philanthropic organization.
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Charles Simonyi (B.S.’72 Eng. Math)
BRIAN SMALE PHOTO
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Software visionary Charles Simonyi led the development of two
of the most widely used computer applications, Word and Excel,
in his 20-year career with Microsoft. He began his career at
the Berkeley Computer Corporation in the 1970s, then moved to
Xerox PARC, when a personal computer cost $50,000. There he
built Bravo, the world’s first WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) word processor, an interface that paved the way for the era of personal computing. In 1981 he moved to Microsoft. He cofounded Intentional Software Corporation in 2002, where he develops “self-writing” software.
A philanthropist in the United States and Europe, he established
the Charles Simonyi Fund for the Arts and Sciences in 2000.
In September 2006 Simonyi was accepted as the world’s fifth
paying passenger on a 10-day science mission to the International
Space Station in March 2007. He began a six-month training regime
in Moscow in October. Thus unable to attend the November 2006
festivities, Simonyi will be honored at the 2007 DEAA event.
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Tejal Desai (Ph.D.’98 BioE)
ELIZABETH FALL PHOTO
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Bioengineer Tejal Desai’s work developing micro- and nanofabricated platforms has revolutionized drug delivery and replacement of damaged blood vessels. She is developing an artificial pancreas that could free America’s 18.2 million individuals with diabetes from daily insulin injections. The device—a microfabricated chip that, when implanted in the pancreas, responds to changes in glucose level and stimulates insulin secretion—has
been successful in rats and could be ready for human use by
about 2010. Desai is professor of physiology at UCSF and director
of its Laboratory of Therapeutic Micro and Nanotechnology.
For more information about the DEAA, its history and past honorees, go to www.coe.berkeley.edu/deaa.
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